The Register’s Liam Proven has been looking for a global menu bar on GNOME that actually works. He thinks Orbit Global Menu, a new GNOME Shell extension, is the first one that’s close.
GNOME has been pushing hamburger menus since GNOME 40 and GTK 4, so a lot of apps no longer have a traditional menu bar at all. Earlier extensions usually broke on most of the applications Proven tried. Orbit’s developer, Unmade, took a brute-force path: the applet ships maps of keyboard controls for 292 apps, draws a menu itself, and sends simulated keystrokes. It isn’t each program’s full menu tree, just a useful subset, but Proven says it worked to at least some extent with every app in a full Ubuntu 26.10 install. If you build a small extra connector, it can talk to even more applications.
Review before you install: read the release notes yourself, back up your config, and try new versions somewhere you can afford to break first.
My take
I still miss a real menu bar on a lot of Linux desktops. Simulated keystrokes aren’t elegant, and they’ll probably break on the next UI redesign, but a menu you can actually use beats a theoretically pure top panel that does nothing. If you try the extension, read the notes and keep a way to turn it off.
God Bless, and May the Source Be with You!
